Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

https://klangmag.co/lifers-dayjobbers-and-the-independently-wealthy-a-letter-to-a-former-student/

by tomduncalf • 3 years ago

248 280 3 years ago

wude9352• 3 years ago

I wonder if there is any artistic benefit by marrying the arts with a deeply capitalist system.

Obviously as this article mentions its not great for the artists themselves, but perhaps the cutthroat nature of the industry makes it so that only the best of the best rise to the top, even if it means it comes from an independently wealthy musician.

bruce5115• 3 years ago

Music is a commodity. There's already more music available to let my playlist run for years without repeats. Plus it's never been easier for folk to create, and publish, new music. With endless supply comes diminishing unit value.

So, not to be brutal, but playing music is not an especially valuable thing, and so people really don't need to pay much for it. Ditto for writing books, making ceramics, pretty much anything artistic.

I say this not to be a dick, but simply to point out the economics. When a million other people can do what you do, and live in the same city, then don't expect to make much of a living at it.

Sure there are exceptions (hi Taylor) but that has less to do with actual music and more to do with other factors.

CPLX13• 3 years ago

No it's not. A commodity would mean that people are indifferent to the music of Metallica vs Taylor Swift vs your brother in law's blues band.

They aren't. So it's not a commodity. Because that's what commodity means.

You could let your playlist run for years, but you don't and nobody else does either because repetition and familiarity and quality are things people care about musically.

Playing music well in a way that is liked by millions is an unbelievably valuable thing. Playing music badly is utterly worthless from an economic standpoint.

x3iv130f• 3 years ago

The exceptions are such because they are able to sell themselves as a "lifestyle brand" with a musical act associated.

Something many musicians don't understand is that music is not primarily artistic nor technical but cultural.

dehrmann• 3 years ago

And TayTay's where she's at because her father supported her in it.

JSavageOne7• 3 years ago

but playing music is not an especially valuable thing

Sure if your definition of value is "income generated".

saagarjha2• 3 years ago

What about this does not apply to software, or any other highly paid profession?

tnecniv• 3 years ago

Yeah it’s supply and demand. There’s a lot more people that would love to be concert pianists than there are concert pianist jobs.

I feel like these conversations often ignore the middle class of musicians that make a decent living gigging, touring, doing studio work, publishing with small labels, etc., but are not making huge money pumping out top 40 hits and filling stadiums.

wude9352• 3 years ago

Yes, but your favorite type of music may not be my favorite type of music. “Good enough” music might be a commodity, and with the commodification of “good enough” music, the more niche genres will start to disappear.

westernpopular2• 3 years ago

This is just "capitalism breeds innovation" with extra steps, and the answer remains No.

npteljes6• 3 years ago

perhaps the cutthroat nature of the industry makes it so that only the best of the best rise to the top

I think that's proven false, by the existence of Marketing as a field. Deep pockets achieve that it's not the "best X" that reaches places, but whatever they are pushing is reaching places. Not 100% the case, but still, music production is so an industry, and it's arguable whether this is good for the artists - or the public, for that matter.

TL;DR the deeper the capitalism, the more exclusively the capital prevails

tomdell2• 3 years ago

As someone who tried the music-or-nothing approach for several years after college and two years in ended up with semi-regular panic attacks, persistent existential dread, and crippling anxiety over finances, I can't recommend getting a day job enough. It saddens me to think of all the creative work I could be doing and all the artistic growth I could be seeing instead of developing marketing software, but at least I'm able to pay my bills, maintain a relationship, and generally live a life that consists of more than just obsessing over music. Less existential dread, too, which helps with focus when I do work on art after work and on the weekends.

swayvil• 3 years ago

I was in art pretty heavy. And ya, instability and dread the norm.

And obsession. To fixate on the creation of the hour 24-7. To be master of my tiny creative walled paradise and let everything else go to hell.

Now I'm not doing that. I'm doing the opposite. I'm expanding. I like it.

ericmay• 3 years ago

semi-regular panic attacks, persistent existential dread

Ha - I’ve known a number of friends who have had this same problem working a “useless 9-5” job and missing out over what they’re passionate about.

It’s all about trade-offs.

tomdell2• 3 years ago

I definitely still feel sadness and anxiety over the feeling that I'm wasting my life on something I don't care about, but it feels more manageable for me than the earth-shattering feeling of having nothing but one thing and that one thing isn't working out the way I thought it would.

Trade-offs indeed.

digging10• 3 years ago

It’s all about trade-offs.

It's true that in our limited lifespans we will always have to choose trade-offs, but the current choice between crushing poverty vs crushing workload is not a natural one; it's contrived. most of us should be working fewer hours in the modern economy and have more leisure/creativity time.

personally, I've made it my goal as a SWE to get a 4-day work week and/or shorter work days. even if it means a pay tradeoff. maybe I'd even get back to coding fun things.

kafkaesque• 3 years ago

I tried living off my music for 10 years when I was young. I was on the verge of homelessness at the end. The existential dread was good for my art, but not my mental health. I was very creative, but also on the verge of not wanting to exist. After that, I sold all my gear and focused on a career in software development. I live a comfortable life now and slowly building back up my home studio and making music again. It doesn't feel the same and I have to really think about how to be creative, whereas before it was more intuitive. It's a trade-off. It feels different.

jfil• 3 years ago

You're a different person now, under different circumstances. It's reasonable that your process and music will sound very different than before.

nomaxx1173• 3 years ago

FWIW the open source scene (at least in the US) can often have very similar dynamics. I believe it was Ashley Williams who put it best by saying that in the Rust community (where I am), one's influence is determined by one's free time. I've noticed over time that in certain areas it can very much be those with the least experience on a subject (but the most free time) who wield the most influence.

trane_project• 3 years ago

I'd love to work full time on my open source project (see profile) but I'll have to keep working for the man for now.

It works and is useful for me already, but without the time needed to polish it and add more content, won't be that useful to other people.

One can dream.

hospitalJail• 3 years ago

I think that is what HN is getting out of this article.

Lots of us have side biz, or are working on something important to us, and we often think our product is better than the leaders of the industry. Heck, from a data/math point of view, mine is the best, without a question. I just don't have the charisma or connections to make it the number 1.

I know my output(science) is going to last beyond my lifetime, even if I'm not nationally popular. I have academics and international leaders reading my work. Good enough for me.

t. Dayjobber

tourmalinetaco• 3 years ago

I've noticed over time that in certain areas it can very much be those with the least experience on a subject (but the most free time) who wield the most influence.

Unfortunately, I have found similar. A prime example I feel is Reddit mods, who all do it for free and spend countless hours moderating a community. In fact powermods, the most influential ones, were moderating a decent handful of communities. There wasn’t necessarily any reason for them to be in power specifically other than they had the time and desire for that power. No real need to interact with the community or even know what they were saying, as long as you could remove enough low quality content to retain your position.

digging10• 3 years ago

I find that phenomenon in many self-organizing communities. it is often true that those with the most free time do get to research the problems and solutions more and have good answers, but even if they do, they dominate the conversation in an inherently unsustainable way. they either drive out newcomers or burn themselves out - sometimes both!

Buttons8402• 3 years ago

You say it like it's a bad thing. I guess it's a bias to be aware of so the community can try to compensate, but there's really no other way. Power goes to those who are contributing. If I'm building an open-source compiler I'd love to give power to the world renowned experts on compilers, but unfortunately they are not participating.

nomaxx1173• 3 years ago

If you're building something that has a big community and sees a lot of use, you've got a lot of different stakeholders with different needs. The folks contributing to the compiler, language, standard library, or build system directly are not your only stakeholders, nor are they your only contributors.

Successful languages don't become successful without a rich ecosystem behind them. The people responsible for those projects are probably more important to your continued success than anyone contributing to the language itself.

What processes you have makes a huge difference in terms of who you give power to. If you have formal processes that ensure that folks have time to weigh in on things, and you make it easy to follow what's going on (signal-to-noise ratio is important here!), you can get much more relevant feedback from a much larger and more important group of stakeholders than if you handle things in a noisy, fast-moving zulip.

vorpalhex3• 3 years ago

As someone who has spent an amazing amount of time coding, it's not because someone was paying my rent. It's because I sacrificed things to be able to work on my art.

I have never had my rent paid for. I did not have a secret pile of cash or someone funding me.

"Everyone who made it when I couldn't was secretly wealthy" is an interesting take but it seems more like coping mechanism than reality.

alpark3• 3 years ago

Coding? Your art is one of the most directly financially valuable skills on the planet and you're comparing yourself to starving musicians?

vorpalhex3• 3 years ago

My coding wasn't valuable when I started, anymore than the beginner guitarist is Bon Jovi.

fallendev• 3 years ago

Good for you if you have a day job outside of coding that pays your bills while you work on your coding craft. You're a dayjobber.

tinycombinator• 3 years ago

The article does shoot some shots at "Richy Rich" characters, but I think it's mainly to convince/uplift the reader to stop comparing their own success with other people's success if their upbringings never made it a fair comparison in the first place.

Your worldly achievements and accomplishments in code should not be compared to a version of you who indeed had a secret pile of cash or someone funding them and never had to sacrifice things for their art, who might have achieved more worldly things.

Floegipoky• 3 years ago

Having studied both CS and music, IMO the skill threshold where you can get paid to code is a lot lower than where you can get paid to music (unless you get very, very lucky and get paid to music because of celebrity rather than skill).

westernpopular2• 3 years ago

I second that. The time it took me from when I started to learn programming to getting paid for a project was just a little over year, and three years to steady pay (i.e. employment).

In contrast, I've been making music for over ten years of my life and have gotten paid a handful of times.

AlwaysRock• 3 years ago

lol I got paid to code when I had zero fucking idea what I was doing after compleating half a 3 month online part time bootcamp. It took me several years to get paid to do stand up and even then it was $150 here or $20 there. I was able to pay my entire rent exactly once from comedy.

It's hard to make money being an artist.

elzbardico2• 3 years ago

You should not stop reading as soon as you get to a point in the text where you get horribly offended and then comment as if you had read the whole thing.

vorpalhex3• 3 years ago

The author repeats the point several times including in the second to last paragraph.

The game is not rigged. It's not some death of meritocracy.

He sort of gets near an important idea when he talks about spotify leading to bandcamp sales, but then misses it: being a successful musician is about more than just playing an instrument, just like being a successful business person is about more than wearing a suit and holding meetings.

ipsi• 3 years ago

Reminds me of a couple of married friends of mine. The wife played a classical musical instrument (e.g., not an electric guitar) and had her sights set on being a professional. While working towards that she did a lot of teaching/practising/etc, and her students would often say something along the lines of "I'm so envious of all this time you have to practice music! How are you able to do it?!" and her reply was always a bit of a let-down/reality check for them: "my husband works in tech."

Not quite independently wealthy, but I imagine there's a fair few artists out there in a similar position.

gonehome• 3 years ago

Also pretty common with authors iirc - a spouse with an income that provides stability.

That said, also easy for people to use this as an excuse.

xen2xen1• 3 years ago

The plot of Breaking Bad?

softfalcon4• 3 years ago

Yup, my brother is literally doing this. He stays at home, plays video games, writes his book. His wife literally works a coal mine to fund his career.

Mistletoe2• 3 years ago

One can think of music teachers as a zero interest rate phenomenon then by proxy, so maybe it wasn’t all bad (but most of it was).

ketzo2• 3 years ago

Listen, can we all agree to stop calling any expenditure of money without a direct expectation of return a "zero interest rate phenomenon"?

"Starving artists" have existed for millenia. The arts patronage system began either or thousands of years ago, depending on who you ask. People have paid lots of money for gold jewelry basically since we figured out how to pull it out of the ground.

I saw someone call dog-walkers a ZIRP recently. No! It's just a luxury! There's a difference!

jiggywiggy• 3 years ago

I know a bunch of classical musicians, and while they study and work hard they all have steady gigs for one or more ensembles & orchestra's.

From the outside it feels somewhat more doable to be a pro , then a band or solo-artist, since there are quite a few orchestra's around that hire people on a stable basis. Spots are limited, but it's not super hard.

aidenn05• 3 years ago

Spots are limited, but it's not super hard.

This depends on the instrument and your location. If you play a popular instrument (say the violin) in a metro area with just one orchestra (some have zero!) then you ain't getting on that orchestra any way short of nepotism. If you live within commuting distance of multiple orchestras, there are more spots, but you still aren't going to be playing violin in the orchestra, and it's even possible that nepotism won't help you.

hecanjog• 3 years ago

It very much is super hard

devonkim• 3 years ago

I studied and played classical into college during my engineering degree and have some insight into the realities of the profession - it's much harder than that and the pay for those stable gigs are oftentimes less than $300 / month. You're looking at one of the classic professional survivorship bias that I thought even the layman understood very well. Firstly, orchestras are in dire straights currently where programs are oftentimes supported by movie and pop media performances (see: National Symphony Orchestra playing Fantasia, Danny Elfman scores, and even freakin' Super Mario Brothers). This is a similar situation to ballet and theatre - legacy performance media I guess I'd call them. These orchestras don't pay much at all and most of the money classical musicians make are from lessons, typically the children of fairly affluent professionals, including from tech, finance, real estate, and other usual suspects of said caste. I saw grad students have to skip meals and beg and plead students to continue lessons to eat while I went off to recruiting events sponsored by tech companies where I ate food constantly and I never stopped feeling guilty even after inviting some friends to avoid pizza waste.

Some very lucky others that do well are from multiple generations of musicians that were essentially born, bred, and raised to be among the world's best and live and breathe music. There was no way I could ever compete with these kinds of folks and the hard life I saw so many talented people including professors that _are_ established after decades to live a very modest life made it clear to me that it wasn't something I should do for a living despite how much I love and respect it all. My role I feel is to support these folks now, so I go to shows, buy merch at the show, etc. and try not to take up space or attention too much and let people do what they do while trying to show appreciation for the work I was too chickenshit to ever do.

The arts and now entertainment fields are very much "tournament" style careers where given very limited public attention the winners take basically all and the remainder struggle quite a lot. It's nothing like professional fields like tech, accounting, medicine, law, or trades like construction, hospitality. In fact, any field that becomes more mass market-driven seems to become substantially more "tournament" style which has greatly impacted sex work - a top n% take an increasingly higher percentage away from an elastic but fundamentally highly dynamic demand.

The misattributed quote "find what you love and let it kill you" is the typical path of the career musician like most arts. I prefer to at least have some money to have more options to make it more fun on the way without resorting to the trap that is recreational substances.

lynx23• 3 years ago

There are exceptions to every rule of course, and the situaton has changed significantly with all-software productions, but... If you dig deeper into many electronic music producers bio, you realize they were sort of rich-kids. First and foremost, hardware costs real money. And this is gambling money, since you typically dont know what is going to come out of that project. And secondly, you need sare time on your hand, to be able to playfully explore the space... Both things are typically hard to find with the working class.

softfalcon4• 3 years ago

I know some successful musicians, DJ's, photographers, and videographers.

One thing they all have in common? Mommy and Daddy were loaded.

digging10• 3 years ago

my partner is a working artist and, though successful, would not be able to live in our city comfortably if they weren't with me (or someone else with similar income). it's depressing, although I'm thrilled to help. it means I can't easily quit if I want to pursue another interest. it means we both have incentive to stay together even if something goes wrong romantically. neither of these points are a problem for us right now, but I am sure many artists do struggle with them.

austhrow743• 3 years ago

How does that create incentive for you to stay with them if something goes wrong romantically?

softfalcon4• 3 years ago

Yeah, similar situation with:

- My brother who is a writer while his wife works at an industrial job that pays exceedingly well

- My friend who is an artist, whose husband owns an engineering firm with big medical device contracts

- My other friend who is a nature photographer, whose husband works in tech

- Yet another friend who is a musician, whose wife works in tech

- Another friend who runs a dog shelter, whose husband is a high paid engineer

- My other friend who is a writer, whose girlfriend is a real estate investment manager at a large bank

- My friend who is a social worker helping at-risk youth, whose husband is an oil and gas executive

- And yet another friend who makes jewelry and sews bags, whose wife owns an investment management firm

- Finally, a friend who volunteers to catalogue deer populations for conservation, whose boyfriend just happens to be a big wig executive for the city

I could go on, I see this phenomenon everywhere. There are no free lunches in life, someone is always footing the bill... just follow the money.

HeyLaughingBoy3• 3 years ago

"What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?"

"Homeless."

mathisfun123• 3 years ago

I wonder how many people there are out there supporting partners working on their struggling startup hmm.

aidenn05• 3 years ago

I'd like to see a list of jobs for which:

1. We generally value as a society

2. Two people both working the job and married to each other cannot afford to raise two children.

There are some jobs which we romanticize as being this way (musicians and other artists being a big example), but are we okay with e.g. social workers all either starving, or from wealthy backgrounds?

dougmwne• 3 years ago

This is lots of people who work in nonprofit.

specproc2• 3 years ago

I worry there's a bit of HN bias here. I don't know anyone whose partner owns an investment management firm or similar.

I know a fair few day jobbing musicians and creatives of other stripes though, only one of which with parents of any real means.

One is a manager at a theatre, one does care work, one does WordPress and a bit of JS for small companies.

The most full-time musician I know did have the richest parents growing up, but he makes his cash teaching and doing session stuff in local theatres.

Given how income distributions work, I think day jobbing creatives are very much the majority.

motohagiography• 3 years ago

Athletes as well. I don't see how a "husband works in tech" answer is a letdown though, as really, what's a marriage for except creating the circumstances from which to grow. Over the decades my tech jobs have supported grad students, authors, craftswomen, actresses, athletes, among others and it was a pleasure watching them level up and grow. If I were ever to be married, earning enough to support arts or athletic pursuits would be pretty ideal. They're how you make kids brilliant and not be boring.

bluefirebrand5• 3 years ago

what's a marriage for except creating the circumstances from which to grow

This is absolutely not in line with how most people I interact with seem to view marriage nowadays, especially not my fellow university students back when I attended.

From my perspective I think younger people mostly seem to view marriage as restricting, or backward and outdated, not an opportunity for something better.

I especially think younger people don't like the idea that in order to have freedom to pursue the things you love, you might need to marry someone who supports you financially. Otherwise you will be too busy financially supporting yourself to have that same freedom.

klardotsh• 3 years ago

Similar/tangent, even working in tech, I sometimes mention to folks how completely out of touch and out of reach the real estate market in the PNW is. "How?", they ask, forgetting that a single person living alone pays the full share of rent, and then only has a single income to save towards real estate.

Nearly 100% of the people I know under age 35 who own their dwelling are couples, with both employed (and an overwhelming majority of those couples have at least one STEM income in that "portfolio").

golergka2• 3 years ago

Yes, that's the point of making money: so that your loved ones (probably kids) could do art or whatever else.

What's the point of it all if you can't invest in your loved ones? Are you a bad person for loving your kids more then some other random kid that they would be competing against? I fail to see anything bad about this.

itake2• 3 years ago

From an ethical society stand point, yes. In the US, we agreed that we need to support everyone’s children and so we pay taxes so other people’s children can attend school.

If you refuse to help other people’s children get an education, you’re evading taxes and that is unethical.

mirror_neuron• 3 years ago

It's a matter of the degree of support. Would it be wrong, in your view, for a wealthy tax-paying parent to invest in their own child above and beyond what their taxes provide for society's children?

EamonnMR• 3 years ago

The indie developer from two weeks ago[1] needed to hear this.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505035

JSavageOne7• 3 years ago

Great, practical advice. I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.

hguant• 3 years ago

In 7 years? I think the current crop of pilot tests for UBI are set to finish up in 7 years. No way meaningful UBI gets well enough established in 7 years to be considered "a norm."

UBI is this generation's fusion - it's going to be 10 years away until the late 2070s, if at all.

lotsofpulp6• 3 years ago

I have yet to see a pilot test for UBI even begin. Which country’s people are all (universal) receiving an income? The whole thing makes no sense if everyone is not getting it.

JSavageOne7• 3 years ago

Completely disagree. In 5 years AI will be so advanced that most humans will be economically irrelevant and unable to compete, forcing governments to implement UBI to avoid societal collapse. By 2030 I would be willing to be money that UBI or something resembling UBI will be the norm in most advanced wealthy countries.

dragonwriter8• 3 years ago

I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.

2030 is much too soon for UBI to be an established norm, and even more much to soon for economies to support it at a level which would radically change this dynamic rather than just mitigating perverse incentives that exist at the edges of means-tested poverty support programs.

eastbound• 3 years ago

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of excellence.

You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

saagarjha2• 3 years ago

Even within software there are a lot of excellent projects created by financially secure people. Clearly at least some people do enjoy doing hard work without being threatened for their livelihood.

dragonwriter8• 3 years ago

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy.

UBI enables meritocracy, it doesn’t kill it.

tonyedgecombe2• 3 years ago

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy.

Meritocracy is already dead (if it existed in the first place).

WalterBright15• 3 years ago

I understood well in college that without the pressure of exams and the threat of flunking out, I'd not have learned nearly as much.

As for a career, other people finding your work so valuable that they're willing to pay you $$$$ for it is the ultimate compliment.

e_i_pi_23• 3 years ago

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t

This seems kinda backwards - UBI gives people the ability to take more risks. Success is mostly determined by how many bets you're able to make, and UBI lets people place more bets. There's plenty of people that would want to start a business but don't have parents able to loan or gift them the money. You'd be opening up more possibilities for people, and people naturally want to do useful things. I'm not sure what hard jobs you're imagining but anything valued by society will still get done because people want to see themselves as valuable.

I think the confusion here is because you have a false premise that there is a meritocracy now - UBI is something that could help us get towards a meritocracy. Right now it doesn't matter how good you would be at something if you can't afford to do it

zerodensity• 3 years ago

I don't really care for this argument. We are currently not living in a meritocracy.

In a true meritocracy everyone must have the same starting point and rise up within the ranks based on their merits from there. In our society we do not all start at the same place. There are people born into wealth and people born into poverty. So some people have to struggle harder to get to the same place as others where born into. Essentially an anti-meritocracy system.

If anything UBIs will help make the system more meritocratic since the ones the bottom no longer need to climb the first hill.

npteljes6• 3 years ago

There is no meritocracy to begin with. What's there to kill is the desperation of people for their next meal.

stinkytaco• 3 years ago

Stress is a factor of excellence.

So is having a rich family. The article provides a long list of examples of great artists who's success is largely enabled by already being wealthy, not necessarily being the best. Even just being lucky enough to already be established puts you far ahead of people trying to break in. I can walk out the door and likely find a job in my industry because I have lots of experience to point to and references who will vouch for me. I think I'm good at my job, but I was also in the right place at the right time to get it and now I'm a safe bet for someone who needs my skills, even if I'm not the best bet. Someone who's trying to break in that's ten times more talented than me might never catch that break. I know for a fact that I've hired lesser candidates because I needed someone who was a known quantity more than I needed someone who was possibly great.

Meritocracy is pretty far down the list as a factor of success in my experience.

tomrod• 3 years ago

Sounds like a market failure for hard jobs to get done at poor wages. What you really meant to say, economically speaking, is that harder jobs will cost more. Good. The current UBI is $0. Let's just increase that a bit.

barbazoo4• 3 years ago

You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

Unless the work is paid highly enough for people to take the job, no? What prevents a company from raising wages?

JSavageOne7• 3 years ago

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy.

How does UBI kill meritocracy?

none of the hard jobs gets done.

Hard jobs that society doesn't value won't get done by humans, but hard jobs that society does value will certainly get done. UBI does not remove free markets, and if anything increases the reward of working hard if large swaths of the labor force do decide to drop out.

nradov5• 3 years ago

There's no way UBI will become the norm. I'm certainly not willing to pay higher taxes so that other people can pursue their passions. They can get a job like the rest of us.

lotsofpulp6• 3 years ago

The point of UBI is that it is universal, so you also would be getting the basic income, so presumably, you can also pursue your "passions".

barbazoo4• 3 years ago

A.k.a "I'm miserable so others should be, too".

JSavageOne7• 3 years ago

In 5-10 years most humans will be economically obsolete because AI will be vastly superior, making UBI inevitable to avoid societal collapse. At that point it will be funny to look back at the arrogance of statements like this.

beepbooptheory• 3 years ago

I think you might be underestimating the fantastic power of the market to adjust. Once this UBI hits, every single landlord will have the same idea..

JSavageOne7• 3 years ago

UBI would ideally be funded by a land value tax (see Henry George's "citizen's dividend")

bob1029• 3 years ago

Knowing that the game is rigged is liberating!
how should you be expected to earn a living using their platforms unless you find a way to game the system? Do you have 20 smartphones lying around, per chance?

This is the message I'd take away. Once you learn that the whole capitalist hellscape operates in approximately the same way, you can start to explicitly target its mechanisms in order to improve your life.

Having moral flexibility helps so much. Being actively willing to "fuck over" arbitrary, faceless entities makes all the difference. If you start looking at the law in terms of "how much does it cost to do whatever I want", then you are now effectively playing by the same rules as those who seek to control your life.

WalterBright15• 3 years ago

Honor is what separates men from animals. We all get to choose which we are.

digging10• 3 years ago

if that's true, then the animals are in charge. you'll be miserable for the honor of being enslaved by beast?

the GP hit the nail on the head saying,

If you start looking at the law in terms of "how much does it cost to do whatever I want", then you are now effectively playing by the same rules as those who seek to control your life.

laws are for the powerless.

solarmist15• 3 years ago

What is moral and what is legal are different. There is overlap, but they are marketed as being the same thing. They are not.

I think you are mostly reacting to GP's word choice of "moral flexibility," and are missing the point.

Do the moral thing, but view the legal as pay-to-play.

A great example is parking tickets. Violating parking rules results in a fine and is not immoral in many situations.

mrguyorama3• 3 years ago

Choosing not to overturn the current abhorrent and unjust system is NOT honor.

WalterBright15• 3 years ago

https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/why-caltech/student-life/...

tiedieconderoga• 3 years ago

In the words of John Oliver's character on Community, "It's just that the average person has a much harder time saying 'booyah' to moral relativism."

tonyedgecombe2• 3 years ago

Elizabeth Gilbert has a good take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g7ARarFNnw

educaysean• 3 years ago

If you're linking to a YouTube video without providing a timestamp, can you at least give us a quick summary of the said "good take"?

dataviz1000• 3 years ago

“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Reminds me of that quote. Rilke, a poet, was an apprentice to, Auguste Rodin, a sculptor, who taught Rilke how to be an artist. Although different disciplines, the nature of creativity and its manifestations are the same.

sbazerque• 3 years ago

Rilke is a must!!! I loved his Duino Elegies.

Buttons8402• 3 years ago

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write.

A quick check of the suicide statistics shows that many have confessed this to themselves.

sandworm101• 3 years ago

> If anyone should have a shot in the various New York music scenes first and foremost, it should be local kids like Billy.If anyone should have a shot in the various New York music scenes first and foremost, it should be local kids like Billy.

New York? A city founded on repeated waves of immigration. The city that put "give us your tired masses" on a big statue in the harbor. New York is not a city setup for locals. It is and has always been a dynamic city for new people doing new things. Being "local" isn't the advantage it is in other areas.

shtopointo• 3 years ago

Came in here to mention something similar.

Seems wishful thinking that New York would owe something to anybody that grew up there. If anything, growing up there should give you the opportunity to have a network already, that would be a local's leg up... from kids you grew up with, to people you practiced music with etc.

This might also be a case of a naive perspective from Billy thinking that the work is all that matters. Nope. Having connections also matters. Do you know bar owners? Do you know venues? Have you done someone a favor that they can pay back? That should be the a "local kid's" advantage. Maybe Billy just didn't form those connections or capitalize on that.

Beyond not feeling bad for taking a side-job, maybe the advice should have been: Network. Get out there, meet people, do favors for people, help them and get help back eventually.

JPws_Prntr_Fngr3• 3 years ago

You seem to have missed the blogger's point, which is that NYC is in the process of locking out the entire class of artists to which the young musician belongs. A one in a million musician with superior networking skill, or unbelievable good looks, or luck, or whatever, may start making bank and secure his place in the city. That's not the point.

The blogger's point is that the game is rigged to the point where if you're not That Guy, you can gtfo. The reality is that there are now millions of international rich kids bringing their parents money to outbid you for that crumbling walkup. So don't feel bad about not being able to compete in this ultra-stacked game without working another job, young musician.

syndacks• 3 years ago

As a New Yorker, I feel the same anytime anyone talks about gentrification and/or their neighborhood changing. Zoom out a bit fella.

fiprofessor2• 3 years ago

Nice essay, but some of the contemporary examples in this paragraph about the independenlty wealthy are not really that compelling:

I’m not saying wealthy people can’t make incredible artists. Without Marcel Duchamp’s monthly allowance from his father throughout his adult life, we would never have Dada. Giacinto Scelsi was literally the heir and Duke of La Spezia castle estate. Something more contemporary? Grimes’ mother was a Crown Prosecutor, the Canadian equivalent of a District Attorney, in Vancouver. Frankie Cosmos’ dad is the guy from Wild Wild West, no, not Will Smith, the other guy. Julian Casablancas’ father ran New York’s top super modeling agency while young Julian hung out at the kid’s table with Ivanka Trump at Christmas time. The list goes on.

The argument is supposed to be that these kids didn't have to worry about paying the rent, so they were able to devote more time to their craft. But I don't think some of the contemporary examples listed were necessarily like that.

Take Grimes -- a Crown Prosecutor is a public servant, so you can look up their average pay ranges: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/careers-myhr/all-employee... . That's definitely a solid middle class life, but not exactly generational wealth. Now, compared to a poor kid who has to take on jobs in high school to support their family, I'm sure she had more time and less stress in her teenage years which let her practice more, but there are lots and lots of middle class children who have that level of free time which they devote to all sorts of extracurriculars.

Moreover, Grimes, Casablancas, and Cosmos blew up when they were in their very early 20s: Cosmos released her debut studio album at 20, Grimes at 22, Casablancas at 23. So, despite any family wealth they may have had, it's not like they spent years and years of their adult lives living off their parents' support, or at least not any more so than hundreds of thousands of college students do every year. Of course, they had it easier than kids who cannot even afford to go to college, or who are working 20 hours a week to pay their way, but I'm not sure it's at all comparable to Duchamp or Scelsi.

Maybe there's an argument that social connections helped them to get their record deals, but the argument presented doesn't seem to apply.

bena2• 3 years ago

Grimes's dad was a former banker working on "the business side of biotech". That's two very solid incomes. And then she was with Devon Welsh, a singer/songwriter whose father was an actor. And most famously has been the partner of Elon Musk. She's had probably a larger share of carefree living than most.

However, success is never just one thing. Because there are plenty of people with the same or greater level of support that Grimes had that never make it.

But the point is that there are plenty of people as talented or more than Grimes who achieve no success at all.

Success is more often than not the result of avoiding catastrophic issues than it is from anything you actively choose. And the more chances you have to try, the more chances you have of doing something that avoids catastrophe.

Hard work, support, talent, luck, determination, these will all help you, but none of them will guarantee you success. Not singularly or in combination.

fiprofessor2• 3 years ago

And then she was with Devon Welsh, a singer/songwriter whose father was an actor. And most famously has been the partner of Elon Musk. She's had probably a larger share of carefree living than most.

No doubt she's had a good life, but Devon Welsh was himself basically a nobody when they dated, and she was already extremely successful as an artist by the time she became Elon's partner.

It's just strange of the author to pick someone who had already released two studio albums during her time as a student at McGill as a supposed example of someone being able to succeed because their parents paid their bills for an interminable amount of time. This is after a paragraph where the author said:

Who paid for all this time? How does someone outside of a conservatory program have the time to compose, record, and perform new original material every month, let alone to even practice their instrument an hour a day? The answer almost always comes down to the ability to not have to worry about paid work while pursuing your craft. As in, most likely, someone in your family pays your rent.

The answer, in the case of Grimes, is she was a college student, probably neglecting her studies a bit, being supported the way many college students or even people in conservatories are.

Balgair• 3 years ago

I think that the author belies his true poverty in the piece then. If a middle class lifestyle is seen to the author as 'rich', then he must be really really struggling. Knowing a few friends that are in the situation that the author is in, I'd agree.

Be like Einstein, make the post office work for you. Maybe that's a better way of thinking about it?

cushychicken• 3 years ago

I never knew Julian Casablancas was a trust fund baby, but knowing that makes a lot of sense out of The Strokes in hindsight.

zeryx• 3 years ago

This doesn't just resonate with creatives - the startup / path to tech entrepreneurship is structured in a very similar way. I've seen lifers, trust funders and day jobbers succeed and fail in different ways, raise funds or bootstrap with nothing for years. Obviously the trust fund kids succeed substantially more often than the lifers or day jobbers

solarmist15• 3 years ago

Yup, threw my hat into the ring to try this for three years and I can see the path forward, but I don't have the income cushion or (VC) sales skills to pull it off except as a dayjobber.

Tiktaalik• 3 years ago

Pretty much everywhere really.

Several years ago I was mulling starting up a retail store in my town and when I looked closer at some of retail stores I liked in similar/adjacent markets I couldn't help but notice the backgrounds of the young founders of those stores, that they just so happened to come from enormously rich families and were obviously independently wealthy.

Their outwardly appearing successful stores may have well been simple hobbies and passion projects.

Possibly these persons were also great business persons and those stores were genuine profitable successes, but there was really no way of knowing. It was something that did dissuade me somewhat from my idea of venturing down the same path.

I absolutely did not have the sort of infinite safety net that they had.

hitekker• 3 years ago

It’s because of this harsh reality that romanticizing the lifer lifestyle in 21st century Brooklyn, or any other major American city, as anything other than the struggle it is can be incredibly dangerous. Millennials and Zoomers have been sold the lie that the big cities remain a bastion for cutting edge arts and culture, let alone that they are even livable for working artists. What year do they expect us to believe it is? The New York Times loves to gloat about the local renaissance happening in Bushwick in the Arts Section while covering a tech CEO who recently bought a brownstone in Bed-Stuy for a cool five million in the Real Estate section.

A unique paragraph. People fall in love with a story they’ve never been apart of, never will be apart of, that is told by people who only caught of glimpse of it.

solarmist15• 3 years ago

Isn't this the modern definition of romanticism? The longing for a beautiful story that may never have existed?

api• 3 years ago

I see a lot of today’s dedicated artists who don’t want to have to grind like mad just to afford rent moving to mid-size cities or even small towns. It’s really the only economically rational move.

Big cities have priced out any culture that is not either subsidized somehow (e.g. trust fund) or already established.

I’d argue that many have even priced out entrepreneurship that is not lavishly funded by VC or founder capital.

My generation (I am on the young gen-X / old millennial cusp) believed, with some truth, that one had to go to one of maybe six to ten cities to do anything cutting edge in most fields. For young people today I don’t think this is true anymore, and if anything these cities have become traps that will destroy your ability to become established.

As would be predicted by the “law of rent,” real estate costs have grown so as to soak up any advantage in being in these places.

microtherion• 3 years ago

The article mentions Philip Glass, but not his work as a plumber, featuring this delightful anecdote he told in an interview:

“While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”

chmod6002• 3 years ago

I don’t see what “the game is rigged” adds to an otherwise positive message, let alone why it comes first.

Why is it somehow bad that musicians need a day job? There are a lot of aspiring musicians out there compared to the audiences waiting for them to perform. A day job is a quite reasonable way to make sure they contribute something to society while we’re waiting to see if they are truly talented or not.

Would we have the same feelings about the “rigged” brewing industry that doesn’t give a young brewer a chance to develop his craft? After a certain point it seems like we’re forgetting that a job is about a contribution to society, not just an expression of some inner identity.

bagacrap3• 3 years ago

Indeed. Many kids aspire to join the NBA. That's a kind of art, isn't it? Yet I think society collapses if we let every one of these kids off from contributing to sustaining it.

At least until the robots and AI take the wheel.

nomaxx1173• 3 years ago

I mentioned OSS in a different comment, but it's not the only thing I've noticed this with. Politics at any level in the US (local, state, or national) falls into the same situation regardless of party.

Activism takes time and resources to be successful and get your name out, and the moral status attached to it creates a similar set of incentives such that you end up with the same pattern of lifers who are perpetually broke, independently wealthy folks who can be heavily involved and live decently at the same time, and folks with a dayjob who are involved but never really wield much influence on any level.

It's an interesting problem and I'd argue it serves as evidence that this happens to anything with attached status. Journalism I've heard has the issue as well.

Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

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